Jacksonville, Florida And A Dress Made Of Pilot FriXion Pens

The American headquarters of the Pilot Pen company is located in a middle-sized city in the far northeast corner of Florida, called Jacksonville.

While it’s becoming more modern – it has its own NFL franchise now – Jacksonville is still very much a mix of old Deep South and Navy port town. Not exactly the kind of place you expect to find runway models and fashion shows.

But, apparently, Jacksonville hosts its very own Fashion Week, an event designed to “establish Jacksonville as (a) fashion destination in the Southeast and ultimately, by discovering talent, be a major contributor to the industry itself,” according to the JFW site.

Pilot is one of the event’s sponsors. And, at this week’s show, Pilot plans to debut a dress by designer Bobby Kelley that is made of nearly 500 red FriXion erasable pens. (There’s probably a joke about an erasable dress in there somewhere.)

Seems like an odd project for a pen company, but Pilot’s made it work, adopting the tagline that the company is “making writing fashionable” again.

As you can see, it’s gotten some attention, with a local television station devoting a spot to the dress in the lead-up to fashion week. In the segment, the designer says he likes using FriXions in sketching his creations because the lines can easily be erased and redrawn.

Hopefully the red FriXion pen dress will be a big hit for Pilot. They’re one of our favorite pen makers, the FriXion is one of our favorite pens, and we want to see both continue for a long time.

By the way, the Jacksonville facility isn’t just where the executives are headquartered. It’s Pilot’s main production site in North America. Just think about that…everywhere you look, stacks and stacks of every kind of Pilot pen, going by on conveyor belts, piling up in bins, running through your fingers. All those pens to play with.

One of these days, I’d love to get a look inside (Jacksonville is only a few hours from where I live, after all). In the meantime, here are a few recent photos that offer just a tantalizing peek at the Pilot assembly plant.

So, what do you think about this pen dress? Let us know.

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Comments

Well, I love the *colour* of the dress….Not sure how practical it is (can you imagine driving a car with it on? 😉 )…..But seriously, I own a few FriXion pens and they’re great, and this is nice publicity for the company. Thanks for the link to the Pilot assembly plant photos—fascinating!